Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 3.djvu/377

SCHUBERT. life is only part of the wonder which will also surround Schubert's songs. After 1822, when his youth was gone, and health had begun to fail, and life had become a terrible reality, his thoughts turned inwards, and he wrote the two great cycles of the 'Müllerlieder' (1823) and the 'Winterreise' (1827); the Walter Scott and Shakspeare songs; the splendid single songs of 'Im Walde' and 'Auf der Brücke,' 'Todtengräbers Heimweh,' 'Der Zwerg,' 'Die junge Nonne'; the Barcarolle, 'Du bist die ruh,' and the lovely 'Dass sie hier gewesen'; the 'Schiffers Scheidelied,' those which were collected into the so-called 'Schwanengesang,' and many more.

It is very difficult to draw a comparison between the songs of this later period and those of the earlier one, but the difference must strike every one, and it resides mainly perhaps in the subjects themselves. Subjects of romance—of ancient times and remote scenes, and strange adventures, and desperate emotion—are natural to the imagination of youth. But in maturer life the mind is calmer, and dwells more strongly on personal subjects. And this is the case with Schubert. After 1822 the classical songs and ballads are rare, and the themes which he chooses belong chiefly to modern life and individual feeling, such as the 'Müllerlieder' and the 'Winterreise,' and others in the list just given. Walter Scott's and Shakspeare's form an exception, but it is an exception which explains itself. We no longer have the exuberant dramatic force of the Erl King, Ganymed, the Gruppe aus dem Tartarus, Cronnan, or Kolmas Klage; but we have instead the condensation and personal point of 'Pause,' 'Die Post,' 'Das Wirthshaus,' 'Die Nebensonnen,' the 'Doppelganger,' and the 'Junge Nonne.' And there is more maturity in the treatment. His modulations are fewer. His accompaniments are always interesting and suggestive, but they gain in force and variety and quality of ideas in the later songs.

In considering the songs themselves somewhat more closely, their most obvious characteristics are:—Their number; their length; the variety of the words; their expression, and their other musical and poetical peculiarities.

1. Their number. The published songs, that is to say the compositions for one and two voices, including Offertories and songs in operas, amount to just 455. In addition there are, say, 150 unpublished songs, a few of them unfinished. The chronological list at the end of this article shows that a very large number of these were written before the year 1818.

2. Their length. This varies very much. The shortest, like 'Klage um Aly Bey' (Lf. xlv. 3), 'Der Goldschmiedsgesell' (Lf. xlviii. 6), and 'Die Spinnerin' (op. 118, 6), are strophe songs (that is, with the same melody and harmony unchanged verse after verse), in each of which the voice part is only 8 bars long, with a bar or two of introduction or ritornel. The longest is Bertrand's 'Adelwold und Emma' (MS., June 5, 1815), a ballad the autograph of which contains 55 pages. Others of almost equal length and of about the same date are also still in MS.—'Minona,' 'Die Nonne,' 'Amphiaraos,' etc. The longest printed one is Schiller's 'Der Taucher'—the diver. This fills 36 pages of close print. Schiller's 'Burgschaft' and the Ossian-songs are all long, though not of the same extent as 'Der Taucher.' These vast ballads are extremely dramatic; they contain many changes of tempo and of signature, dialogues, recitatives, and airs. The 'Ritter Toggenburg' ends with a strophe-song in five stanzas. 'Der Taucher' contains a long pianoforte passage of 60 bars, during the suspense after the diver's last descent. 'Der Liedler' contains a march. The Ballads mostly belong to the early years, 1815, 1816. The last is Mayrhofer's 'Einsamkeit,' the date of which Schubert has fixed in his letter of Aug. 3, 1818. There are long songs of later years, such as Collin's 'Der Zwerg' of 1823; Schober's 'Viola' and 'Vergissmeinnicht' of 1823, and 'Schiffers Scheidelied' of 1827, and Leitner's 'Der Winterabend' of 1828; but these are essentially different to the ballads; they are lyrical, and evince comparatively few mechanical changes.

It stands to reason that in 650 songs collected from all the great German poets, from Klopstock to Heine, there must be an infinite variety of material, form, sentiment, and expression. And one of the most obvious characteristics in Schubert's setting of this immense collection is the close way in which he adheres to the words. Setting a song was no casual operation with him, rapidly as it was often done; but he identified himself with the poem, and the poet's mood for the time was his. Indeed he complains of the influence which the gloom of the 'Winterreise' had had upon his spirits. He does not, as is the manner of some song-composers, set the poet at naught by repeating his words over and over again. This he rarely does; but he goes through his poem and confines himself to enforcing the expression as music alone can do to poetry. The music changes with the words as a landscape does when sun and cloud pass over it. And in this Schubert has anticipated Wagner, since the words to which he writes are as much the absolute basis of his songs, as Wagner's librettos are of his operas. What this has brought him to in such cases as the Erl King, the Wanderer, Schwager Kronos, the Gruppe aus dem Tartarus, the Shakspeare songs of 'Sylvia' and 'Hark, hark, the lark!' those of Ellen and the Huntsman in 'The Lady of the Lake' even Englishmen can judge; but what he did in the German literature generally may be gathered from the striking passage already quoted from Vogl (p. 327b), and from Mayrhofer's confession—doubly remarkable when coming from a man of such strong individuality—who somewhere says that he did not understand the full force even of his own poems until he had heard Schubert's setting of them.